


still the sea is salt

by youcallitwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcallitwinter/pseuds/youcallitwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Winter is coming.</i> It is rather fitting, if redundant at a time when winter has arrived. [Jon/Daenerys] [Post S2]</p>
            </blockquote>





	still the sea is salt

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> **still the sea is salt**  
> 
> 
>   
>  _game of thrones | jon/daenerys; implied jon/arya, daenerys/jorah |_   
>  _pg-13 | post season 2_   
> 
> 
> She thinks it's fitting to meet by the sea when the world is about to end.
> 
>   

 

She thinks it is fitting to meet by the sea when the world is about to end. There is no time to it, no history. Frozen solid now, but it is the sea nonetheless, somewhere deep down, beneath the cracks.

“Jon Snow,” he says his name is, “of the Night’s Watch.”

It is amusing how the boy thinks the Night’s Watch means anything when the White Walkers walk again. That the Iron Throne means anything when both the men who had loved her lie wasting in the ground somewhere and her dragons could die from the cold and she could be left all alone, forever.

As long as forever lasts.

“Snow,” she repeats after him, like it still matters, “bastard from the North.”

 _Winter is coming_.

It is rather fitting, if redundant at a time when winter has arrived.

He looks away.

//

“Daenerys of House Targaryen,” she says, thinks of lying for a moment, just so the boy will stay a little while longer. But she is Daenerys Stormborn, she does not lie about who she is. Because then she would be no one. It is so very cold today.

He draws his sword, like she had known he would. She has known him for an hour, and she knows this because he has no history. All he has are gestures open to anyone willing to read them, and she is a good reader.

“You were believed dead.”

Maybe she is. Maybe it is she who lies rotting beneath the ground and not Khal Drogo or Ser Jorah. It should have been her.

“You will not hurt me,” she says.

His sword stops an inch short of her skin, and in his eyes she reads the hesitation,  _this is not who you are_ , she thinks.

“I do not strike girls,” he finally states, avoiding her steadfast gaze.

She draws her knife then and slashes it across his wrist, just enough for the blood to seep through the cut and freeze on his translucent, cold, white skin. It is a work of art.

“I am Daenerys Stormborn. The Khaleesi of the Dothraki. The Mother of Dragons. I am not a  _girl_ , sir.”

She waits for him to leave.

Instead, he stays.

//

He does not know much about women, if anything, she realizes a day later.

The cave is dry. Her dragons light the dry leaves on fire, but it is a weak flame, and for a moment she is terrified. She is a mother and she will watch her children die, and she will not be allowed to grieve because they think the dragons aren’t her  _children_. They are an asset in the war. A means to the Iron Throne, but they are not her flesh and blood. Not human even, they will say.

But the dragons are hers and hers alone. They are the only children she will ever have.

Jon Snow watches her dragons with fascinated wariness. He sits far away and his eyes glow when the fire passes through her and lights the leaves in front of him, but he does not say anything. His skin gains color, loses some of the icy whiteness the snow had lent it.

Jon Snow. He is a child of winter, but the snow freezes him. She is the daughter of fire. Fire cannot burn her. But it cannot warm her either. She has winter in her heart now.

He does not come closer. He does not try to touch her. And in just a few hours, she is wishing he would, because she cannot go to him and demand to be touched.

And he would not touch her even if she asked. She knows this, because she knows this man now. She is him and he is her and they are all that's left in the world to know.

//  
  
“Did you love him?” he asks, despite himself.

She does all the talking, while he sits silent in the corner. She talks against the hunger, against the cold, against everything that is lost in a mist of white. She creates lands through her words and places at the back of her eyes. She talks about the desert, about the golden city of treachery. Knows in her heart that her entire world now is this cave and this man and the two sons she has left and the one son who died and lies buried in a shallow grave at the end of the cave.

She does not go there.

And sometimes she forgets he is there. She talks because these are stories that no one will ever hear South of the Wall. They will never know that Daenerys of House Targaryen had lived. That she had had a conqueror’s spirit. That she had loved. That she had lost. That she had dared to love again. That she had been the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, and it had belonged to her and her alone.

So she leaves her stories to the walls. They will be here, long after she is gone, and she will have left her mark.

She thinks of his question for a moment, and she knows the answer, maybe she always did. She can't remember why it had seemed so important to lie, but what does it matter now, “yes.”

He is a quiet for a while, and she believes he has said all he had to, because he only ever strings a few words at a time, “I have never loved. I have never been hurt like that.”

She stares into the fire. Wishes it would burn her, just once. “You have lost more than I have.”

//

She catches him staring sometimes, like he was just glancing and forgot to look away. It is an unusual stare. It has as much a brother’s love as the lover’s lust.

“You remind me of someone,” he says, the first time he speaks when she hasn’t spoken, “someone I had known.”

 _But then you have loved_ , she thinks, does not say,  _eyes cannot lie like tongues do._

“Of whom?” she asks instead.

“Arya,” he smiles, he is beautiful when he smiles, “she was my sister. Half sister. A trueborn Stark.”

 _It does not matter how you felt_ , she wants to tell him,  _there is no shame now_ ,  _not in the winter, not near the water_.

“Did she look like me?”

He looks at her a long time, “no,” he says, finally, “nothing like you. But you remind me of her. She did not have your beauty. She had your spirit.”

 _I could love you,_ she thinks, because she is cold and lost and alone, and, in the moment, much closer to the girl she had been rather than the woman she became,  _I could love you even though my heart is not gentle and pieces of it lie buried all over the world that used to be. I could love you._

//

He makes love to her that night. He is unsure and rushed and she knows it is the first time he has touched a woman, but for a few moments, she is warm. For a few moments she burns like ordinary men do. Maybe he thinks of his sister, she does not know.

But she is like his sister, he had said so himself, so maybe it is her that he thinks of when his mouth roams and his hands caress.

She thinks of the sea.

Her scream is swallowed by the stillness. Beneath the cracks, the water flows, silent as a frozen world.


End file.
